Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com
Published - Saturday, May 03, 2008
Womenpriests are not in apostolic succession
On April 27, Bridget Mary Meehan wrote many statements in regards to the “womenpriests” and the Catholic Church.
I would like to take the opportunity to address some of them.
She made an inaccurate statement that the ordaining bishop is in valid apostolic succession.
First, we need to define one type of excommunication. “… Latae sententiae (automatic) excommunications are made public when a competent Church superior declares them.”
Canon 1331 prohibits an excommunicated person from sharing in any ministerial function in the liturgy, including receiving or celebrating the sacraments and exercising any ecclesiastical office, ministry, function or act of governance within the church.
Excommunicable offenses begin with canon 1364. Those who embrace schism, heresy or apostasy incur automatic excommunication.
Canon 1382 automatically excommunicates both the bishop who presides over the unlawful consecration and the bishop who receives unlawful consecration. This excommunication can only be lifted by the Holy See.
All of the previous canon laws can be found at Catholic.com or from the Vatican directly.
From the above paragraphs, a bishop performing the ordination and the “ordained” are excommunicated and are no longer in full-communion with the Catholic Church. The ordinations are invalid and thus no apostolic succession is continued. They are unable to hold any office, receive or celebrate any sacraments (such as Holy Orders or ordination).
The ordinations of women in Germany in 2002 were invalid and the women made no signs of repentance when given the chance.
“On 5 August the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published the Decree of Excommunication of the seven women who took part in an invalid ordination ceremony in Austria on Saturday, 29 June,” according to EWTN.com. “The women were given time to repent and renounce their ordination, but the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith noted that they have given no sign of repentance.”
Meehan states recent scholarship affirms that women were ordained in the first 1,200 years of church history.
“The first great history of the Church was written by Eusebius of Caesarea around 325. ... The Ecclesiastical History is the fullest account we have of goings-on in the Church up to the time of Constantine. Nowhere in that work does one find a mention of women priests,” according to Catholic.com
St. Irenaeus (189 A.D.), Tertullian (200 A.D.), St. Firmilian (253 A.D.), Council of Nicaea I (325 A.D.), Council of Laodicea (360 A.D.) and St. John Chrysostom (387 A.D.) are some examples of saints and councils that have condemned women’s ordination.
Meehan quotes St. Augustine in her article; however, he, too, was against women’s ordination when reproving heretics in 428 A.D.
In Catholic theology, divine revelation is transmitted in three different forms, yet all are equal to each other: sacred Scripture, sacred tradition, and the magisterium of the church.
Sacred Scripture, while not directly saying women are not to be ordained, does have strong evidence against it. First, Christ chose 12 apostles, despite the women followers. Next, after Judas Iscariot’s death, Matthias is voted to replace Judas, not the Virgin Mary.
Sacred tradition has again the Apostles and their successors choosing men to continue the priesthood.
Finally, the magisterial authority has infallibly taught against women’s ordination (“The Male Priesthood: The Argument From Sacred Tradition,” Mark Lowery, assistant professor, University of Dallas). Therefore, the ordination of women will never occur since the Catholic Church can only teach what Jesus Christ and his disciples (what they learned from him) taught.
Meehan says the church’s prohibition against women’s ordination is not based on Scripture as decided by the International Biblical Commission of 1976. Both the commission and the Vatican agreed that Scripture itself does not supply direct evidence for ordaining women.
Secondly, some of the commission and the Vatican agreed there are “sufficient indications” that point to not ordaining women.
Thirdly, a question posed by the Biblical Commission was answered by the Vatican concerning that the church does not have the authority to “admit women to the priestly ordination.”
To summarize, the Catholic Church cannot and will not ordain women, and there is no basis for this rite found in sacred scripture and tradition, teachings of the magisterium of the church, along with history.
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